#iLiana Fokianaki

[mthvn]

Painting Trees (2020) is part of an e-flux art fundraiser for earthquake relief in Syria and Turkey running from April 1—May 1, 2023. Artists: Marwa Arsanios, Iman Issa, Ahmet Öğüt, Walid Raad, Christian Nyampeta, Jumana Manna, Koki Tanaka, Raqs Media Collective, Nikita Kadan, iLiana Fokianaki, Pelin Tan, Jonas Staal, Metahaven, and Maryam Tafakory. See https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/530274/art-benefit-for-earthquake-relief-in-syria-and-turkey/  Metahaven, Painting Trees, 2020, 22 x 15 cm jacquard weaving. Part of the series Arrows I.

[praxismatters]

THE EVENS ARTS PRIZE 2023

Exploring the critical imaginaries of AI The Evens Arts Prize 2023 is dedicated to artistic practices that challenge prevailing systems of knowledge and experiments new alliances between living beings and machines. 

The Jury is composed of Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Artistic Co-Director, Kunstenfestivaldesarts; Nicolas Bourriaud, Artistic Director, 15th Gwangju Biennale; Elena Filipovic, Director and Curator, Kunsthalle Basel; Matteo Pasquinelli, Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science, Ca’ Foscari University; Gosia Plysa, Director, Unsound. The Jury Chair is André Wilkens, Director, European Cultural Foundation. Artistic Director:  Anne Davidian, curator.

Focus of the Evens Arts Prize 2023 The widespread use of AI applications, particularly in the form of text-to-image generators and large language models, has sparked intense scrutiny and debate. These discussions, fueled by both excitement about their potential and concerns about their biases, bring to the forefront crucial questions about human subjectivity, autonomy, and agency.

Technical systems are deeply intertwined with social systems, shaping our lived experiences, aspirations, and politics. Together with artists, how can we better understand and address the impact of AI and the broader constellation of digital technologies and algorithmic politics? What new imaginaries and alliances can we cultivate between living beings and machines?

The new edition of the Evens Arts Prize seeks to highlight artistic projects that explore alternative cosmologies and epistemologies, question human exceptionalism, and shed light on issues such as surveillance, manipulation, extractivism, digital governance, justice, care, and responsibility in the age of machine intelligence. Of particular interest are practices that experiment with AI to challenge prevailing systems of knowledge and power asymmetries, mobilise technologies towards emancipatory community outcomes, and envision democratic futures.

The laureate is selected by an independent jury from a list of nominations put forward by representatives of major European cultural institutions.

The Nominators of the Evens Arts Prize 2023 Ramon Amaro, Senior Researcher in Digital Culture, Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam; Zdenka Badovinac, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Lars Bang Larsen, Head of Art & Research, Art Hub, Copenhagen; Leonardo Bigazzi, Curator, Foundation In Between Art Films, Rome; Mercedes Bunz, Professor Digital Culture & Humanities, King's College, London; Francesca Corona, Artistic Director, Festival d'Automne, Paris; Julia Eckhardt, Artistic Director, Q-02, Brussels; Silvia Fanti, Artistic Director, Live Arts Week /Xing, Bologna; iLiana Fokianaki, Founder, State of Concept, Athens; Cyrus Goberville, Head of Cultural Programming, Bourse de Commerce | Pinault Collection, Paris; Stefanie Hessler, Director, Swiss Institute, New York; Mathilde Henrot, Programmer, Locarno Film Festival; Nora N. Khan & Andrea Bellini, Artistic Directors, Biennale Image en Mouvement 2024, Geneva; Peter Kirn, Director, MusicMakers HackLab, CTM Festival, Berlin; Inga Lace, Curator, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga; Andrea Lissoni, Director, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Frank Madlener, Director, IRCAM, Paris; Anna Manubens, Director, Hangar, Barcelona; Anne Hilde Neset, Director, Henie Onstad, Høvikodden; Nóra Ó Murchú, Artistic Director, transmediale, Berlin; Maria Ines Rodriguez, Director, Walter Leblanc Foundation, Brussels; Nadim Samman, Curator for the Digital Sphere, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Andras Siebold, Artistic Director, Kampnagel, Hamburg; Caspar Sonnen, Head of New Media, International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), Amsterdam; Marlies Wirth, Curator for Digital Arts, MAK, Vienna; Ben Vickers, Curator, Publisher, CTO, Serpentine Galleries, London.

The Evens Arts Prize The Evens Arts Prize honours artists who engage with contemporary challenges in Europe and shape inspirational visions for our common world. Far from reducing artistic practice to a function – whether a social balm or a political catalyst – the Evens Arts Prize supports aesthetically and intellectually powerful work that pushes the understanding of alterity, difference, and plurality in new directions, questions values and narratives, creates space for silenced or dissonant voices, and reflects on diverse forms of togetherness and belonging.

The biennial Prize is awarded to a European artist working in the fields of visual or performing arts, including cinema, theater, dance, music; it carries a sum of €15,000. The laureates are selected by an independent jury, from a list of internationally acclaimed artists, nominated by representatives of major European cultural institutions.

The 2011, 2019 and 2021 editions were curated by Anne Davidian and celebrated Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Eszter Salamon, and Sven Augustijnen as laureates of the main prize, while Eliane Radigue and Andrea Büttner received the Special Mention of the Jury.

More about the Prize

📷 from Atlas of Anomalous AI, edited by Ben Vickers and K Allado-McDowell, Ignota Books, 2020

[dmcreativestudio]

Redistribution via Appropriation: White(washing) Marbles - Iliana Fokianaki

Institutions, biennials, and mega-exhibitions attack colonial pasts, but not presents. They are quick to be politically correct and “host” the Other—while often maintaining an all-white staff, and a clearly rigidly Western approach as to how to institute. Before attempting to address what is to be done, one must first understand the limitations of the contemporary art institution and the mega-exhibition. These forms fail to escape the mechanisms of power they wish to condemn, since they cling to a notion of “civilization” with roots in modernism that continues to structure particular modes of discourse.

When examining the European identity myth, which by default encompasses Christian whiteness and the supposed universal of civilization, we need to remember Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s description of “internal colonialisms” in Europe, as well as his distinction between different kinds of colonizers. Santos categorizes colonizers into two groups: core countries of the continent with a colonial past that produced their wealth, but which also sustains this wealth today through internal colonization of weaker EU members; and semi-peripheral countries like his native Portugal, which used to be colonizers but are now financially weak and internally colonized. I add here a third category to his useful schema: the peripheral countries of Greece and most of the Balkans that have no colonial history and sit largely outside the Catholic/Protestant club. Their financial weakness and constant lack of sovereignty (among other factors) blocks them from becoming core countries.

Today, after a failed referendum and many memorandums, after being ridiculed for not yet becoming civilized enough, European enough, orderly enough, financially balanced enough, or in fact white enough, contemporary Greece is counterposed to the image of its “ancient glory.” This ancient glory has proven dangerous not only in the hands of neo-Nazis, but also in the hands of the leftist intelligentsia of the EU, which has reprimanded Brussels not for imposing policies that violate human and citizen rights, but for mistreating the “mother of the European idea.” But Greece’s self-image has gone through the blender of the West and mutated into something alien, to then be redistributed as the ultimate root and example of civilization’s “universal truth.”

In European culture, the politics of hospitality are usually settled through state discourses on multiculturalism, where tolerance and inclusivity (or the rather abhorrent “integration policies” of the 1990s) are demonstrated via fixed notions of “diversity.” Yet this discourse of multiculturalism remains inhospitable toward behaviors that operate outside European “superior knowledge.” In the cultural field, and specifically in cultural institutions, the mechanism is clear: European and Western cultural hegemony imposes upon institutions a certain “civilized” way to behave. The presentation and discussion of this behavior is undeniably reminiscent of older Western notions of how a civilized host should perform toward an exotic, uncivilized other. The overintellectualization of cultural discourse, tied into Eurocentric academia, leaves all those who are not trained to write and think with excellent English skills or advanced knowledge of critical discourse—often the case in Greece, where the production of contemporary art discourse and critique is minimal—feeling irrelevant.

[enricopiras]

Montecristo Project is taking part in the Roaming Assembly #25 of the Dutch Art Institute, convened by Iliana Fokianaki - Cagliari, Lazzaretto, June 30th 2019

°

https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/13827/2019-~-sunday-june-30-roaming-assembly-25-~-radio-mutiny-~-convened

[montecristoproject]

Montecristo Project is taking part in the Roaming Assembly #25 organized by the Dutch Art Institute in Cagliari, Sardinia. We’ll be contributing to the assembly’s radio mutiny organized by Iliana Fokianaki for the 30th of June

https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/13827/2019-~-sunday-june-30-roaming-assembly-25-~-radio-mutiny-~-convened

[probablyasocialecologist]

The settler colonialism that created the United States was one chapter in Northern Europe’s colonization of much of the globe. The individualistic ideology at the root of this colonialism positioned self-care above and in opposition to care for the community and for others. This notion was at war with the collective notions of care held by indigenous populations in much of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Individualist self-care, with its implied cultural superiority, helped Western imperialists justify their takeover of whole territories and continents.

iLiana Fokianaki, A Bureau for Self-Care: Interdependence versus Individualism

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

#HailCaesar #BirtherInChief #CorpMedia #Idiocracy #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity

Rojava Film Commune - Forms of Freedom

https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/324081/rojava-film-communeforms-of-freedom/

Curated by iLiana Fokianaki in collaboration with the Rojava Film Commune...

[worldfoodbooks]

NEW IN THE BOOKSHOP: DISTRIBUTED edited by DAVID BLAMEY and BRAD HAYLOCK (2018) • Texts by Ahmed Ansari, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey, David Blamey, Justin Clemens, Alex Coles, Neil Arthur & Jonathan Lindley, David Cross, Neil Cummings, Arnaud Desjardin, Sean Dockray & Benjamin Forster, Iliana Fokianaki, Susan Hawthorne, Brad Haylock, Robert Hetherington, Ross jardine, Gareth Long, Markus Miessen & Jens-Maier Rothe, Billie Muraben, Rathna Ramanathan, Patricia Reed, Adrian Shaughnessy & Freek Lomme, Martine Syms & Pip Wallis, Jake Tilson, Eva Weinmayr • The power of knowledge lies not only in generating ideas, but also in controlling their dispersion. For those who would seek to influence others, the dissemination of ideas is paramount. For those looking to protect the fruits of intellectual labor for reasons of profit or ethics, distribution is something to control. Either way, distribution is a key concern across the spectrum of cultural production, particularly at a time when digital networks have facilitated an unprecedented access to audiences. • Bringing together contributors from a variety of backgrounds, Distributed presents the act of distribution as a subject of significant social and economic importance and argues that it merits serious creative consideration. From the attention-seeking impulse of the “influencer” to the democratization of art via books, performances, videos or sound, the increased urge to disseminate is explored here as an elemental phenomenon of our time. • Available via our website. • #worldfoodbooks #openeditions #bradhaylock #davidblamey #distributed (at WORLD FOOD BOOKS)

[machteldcontext]

Missie

Extra City is een kunsthal die inspiratie vindt in de stad Antwerpen om verschillende visies over onze toekomst te verbeelden, door nieuwe verbindingen te stimuleren tussen hedendaagse (inter)nationale beeldende kunst en kunstenaars, onderzoekers en stadsbewoners.

Programma

- thematische groepstentoonstellingen en solopresentaties met (inter)nationale actuele beeldende kunst - een breed aanbod aan avondactiviteiten, met films, lezingen en debatten - open dialoog, ontmoeting en een lekkere hap in het Extra Fika Café

Visie

Extra City vertrekt van de stad en koppelt er steeds naar terug. We richten ons op de stedelijke werkelijkheid in al haar facetten, als het brandpunt van de vele uitdagingen van de eenentwintigste eeuw. Extra City wil er de loep van zijn: het programma legt onderbelichte kansen en conflicten bloot en speurt naar esthetische of sociaal-politieke naden in het stedelijke weefsel; het voedt nieuwe verbeeldingen en stimuleert het artistiek onderzoek en debat over de stad. Omdat we op vele manieren iets willen betekenen voor onze omgeving werken we altijd in verbinding met andere (boven)lokale krachten, artistiek en niet-artistiek. Net zo gelaagd en veranderlijk als het stedelijke vraagstuk is onze programmatie: veelzijdig, soms heel scherp, maar nooit te snel. Extra City creëert in de stad extra denk- en ademruimte: niet als geïsoleerde comfortzone, wel als een open plek waar wordt nagedacht over een maatschappij in transitie, over grenzen heen.

Extra City werkt met beeldende kunst die de geest ademt van deze tijd. Ze spreekt ons aan omdat ze dieper graaft en graag traag en onderzoekend in dialoog gaat met de werkelijkheid voorbij de kunstwereld. De kunst die Extra City presenteert of laat creëren kan complex en eigenzinnig zijn; in haar bekommernis om de stad stelt ze zich echter open voor elke nieuwsgierige bezoeker. Diezelfde stedelijke betrokkenheid zoekt Extra City bij kunstenaars, onderzoekers en curatoren. We bieden hen een creatieve vrijplaats én de stad, voor gedurfde experimenten met tentoonstellingen, debat en samenwerkingen. Zo wil Extra City met haar werking kunstenaars stimuleren, inspireren en confronteren. We bieden kunstenaars een kader waarin hun werk in optimale omstandigheden getoond, geduid en besproken wordt binnen zowel een lokale als internationale omgeving.

Extra City draagt zorg voor het publieke begrip van hedendaagse kunst. Voor ons is het publiek even belangrijk als de kunstenaar. We zien onze bezoekers als een rijke en diverse verzameling van kennis en ervaringen. Als mensen de stad maken, wil Extra City de plek zijn waar zij zich welkom voelen, een plaats waar het borrelt van verrijkende contacten tussen stadsbewoners en kunstenaars, leken en kenners. Ons huis in Antwerpen vormt een knooppunt voor (inter)nationale, interculturele en interdisciplinaire samenwerkingen, die via kunst bijdragen aan het begrip van een samenleving in verandering. Alle tentoonstellingen zijn gratis te bezoeken. We creëren een context die iedereen aangepaste tools aanreikt om zich artistiek werk eigen te maken, zelfs als dat minder toegankelijk lijkt. Extra City ‘openbaart’ kunst, en draagt zo bij aan een breder maatschappelijk draagvlak voor artistieke reflectie en verbeelding.

Historiek

Extra City werd in 2004 opgericht door Wim Peeters en was oorspronkelijk onderge- bracht in een graansilo in de Antwerpse haven. Met enkele tentoonstellingen van internationale faam was de toon meteen gezet: diepgang en kwaliteit werden sleutelbegrippen waarbinnen Extra City zou opereren.

In 2006 werd Anselm Franke benoemd tot artistiek directeur en verhuisde het instituut naar een gewezen industriële ruimte in Antwerpen-Noord. Steeds meer evolueerde Extra City in de richting van een echte Kunsthal, met doorwrochte thematische ten- toonstellingen zoals ‘Mimétism’ en ‘Animism’, solotentoonstellingen van internationaal gerenommeerde kunstenaars en een discursief programma zoals het in België nauwelijks bestond.

Onder leiding van Mihnea Mircan ging Extra City zich in de periode van 2011 tot 2015 nog meer toeleggen op de tentoonstelling als onderzoeksinstrument, zoals de reeks ‘Cross-Examinations’ en het indrukwekkende ‘Allegory of the Cave Painting’, naast solotentoonstellingen van ondermeer Luc Deleu, Jean-Luc Moulène, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Laure Prouvost en Michael Dean. Ook het aanvullende programma werd een belangrijk platform voor research.

De Kunsthal vestigde zich in september 2013 op de huidige locatie in Antwerpen-Berchem: in de voormalige industriële Wasserij Goossens is er naast de tentoonstellingsruimten van Extra City nog plaats voor kunstenaarsateliers, een bar, een kleine cinemazaal en de kantoren van partnerorganisaties als Antwerp Art, Platform 0090, Gagarin en Kunst/Werk.

Tijdens een grondig herpositioneringstraject in 2016 werd de missie, visie en structuur van Extra City geactualiseerd Sinds september 2016 is Adinda Van Geystelen de nieuwe directeur. Samen met een artistiek kernteam dat om de drie jaar wisselt, zal zij de Kunsthal een nieuwe impuls geven. Antonia Alampi (IT), iLiana Fokianaki (GR) en Michiel Vandevelde (BE) zijn het artistieke team voor de periode 2017 tot 2019. Zij zullen samen met de staf van Extra City de nieuwe missie van de kunsthal concreet vorm geven in een tentoonstellings- en publiek programma. De diepgravende artistieke inhoud wordt gekoppeld aan een thematische focus: hoe kan beeldende kunst de hedendaagse stedelijkheid in al haar dimensies onderzoeken én verbeelden. Een ambitieus en fundamenteel aspect van de nieuwe werking van Extra City is de missie om verdiepende, actuele kunst te ontsluiten voor een breder publiek.

[mthvn]

Metahaven in conversation with iLiana Fokianaki. Publication with the exhibition Passphrases, State of Concept Athens, 2021. 1/3

[aguidetourofsardiniansculpture]

Antonio Tiddia, Squarehead - Montecristo Project at Dutch Art Institute Roaming Assembly #25, convened by Iliana Fokianaki, June 30th, Cagliari - A guide-tour of Sardinian Archaic, Weird and Marvelous Stone Sculpture (La Costante Resistenziale)

[elladastinkardiamou]

Created in 1955 by artist and curator Arnold Bode, Documenta sought to advance the cultural reconstruction of Germany within the postwar European order. Reoccurring every five years, it has since unfolded into a periodic forum for contemporary art. When Adam Szymczyk was appointed artistic director of Documenta 14 in November 2013, he proposed calling the exhibition “Learning From Athens,” opening it first in the Greek capital and then in its traditional home in Kassel. Four years later, with the Greek exhibition now underway and the German edition about to open, iLiana Fokianaki and Yanis Varoufakis share their views on the show, its development, and its implications.

[doragarciathebook]

Join us November 20th at Fondation Hippocrène, for Dora García's performance La Peste, followed by a conversation between iLiana ILiana Fokianaki and Jonas Staal: After Europe-Art as the Spectre over the Union. 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 19:30-20:30​ Dora García, La Peste (performance, with Geoffrey Carey) Invited to take the artistic direction of the opera The Plague by Roberto Gerhard, Dora García starts to dissect the novel La Peste by Camus, of which this text activation is one of the first episodes. 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 20:30-22:00 ​iLiana Fokianaki, Jonas Staal, After Europe : Art as the Spectre over the Union (conversation). In relation to the current sociopolitical climates, that have been re-enforcing logics that exclude, alienate and divide, where does art stand as a possible alternative to the fragmentation experienced throughout the European Union? Curator iLiana Fokianaki and artist Jonas Staal will discuss their practice as cultural workers that propose curatorial and artistic models aimed to contribute to re-imagining different states, societies, parliaments and political campaigns. 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 Images from Dora Garcia, la Peste (Project SD) 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 #multitudinousseas #phenomenon #anafi #paris #doragarcia #geoffreycarey #ilianafokianaki #jonasstaal (at Fondation Hippocrène) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp6JU-LhQ12/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1waco7quj93fb

[fairyfest]

“We Come Bearing Gifts”

“We Come Bearing Gifts”

“We Come Bearing Gifts”—iLiana Fokianaki and Yanis Varoufakis on Documenta 14 Athens

Created in 1955 by artist and curator Arnold Bode, Documenta sought to advance the cultural reconstruction of Germany within the postwar European order. Reoccurring every five years, it has since unfolded into a periodic forum for contemporary art. When Adam Szymczyk was appointed artistic director of…